Hulu's 'Girl From Plainville' recalls the notorious 'texting-suicide' case

The infamous "texting-suicide" case of Michelle Carter and Conrad Roy III is revisited to dramatic effect in a limited series upcoming on Hulu.

In "The Girl From Plainville," which begins streaming the first three of its eight episodes Tuesday, March 29, Elle Fanning has the title role as Carter, the small-town Massachusetts teen who in 2017 was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the 2014 suicide of her boyfriend Roy.

Roy (played here by Colton Ryan, "Dear Evan Hansen"), a nice, earnest kid who loved to play baseball, had an unhappy home life. His parents, Lynn and Conrad Jr. (Chloë Sevigny and Norbert Leo Butz), had a violent relationship before they divorced and Dad sometimes turned his wrath on his son.

So young Conrad became despondent and convinced he was worthless, and he shared his desire to end his life with Michelle via text message, an idea she eventually encouraged. After his death, those conversations got the attention of police.

Written and executive-produced by showrunners Liz Hannah ("The Post") and Patrick McManus ("Dr. Death"), the series also stars Cara Buono, Aya Cash, Kai Lennox and Michael Mosley. It's based on the 2017 Esquire article of the same name by Jesse Barron, which largely served as the basis of Fanning's research on the case.

"What attracted me to the project in the first place," explains the actress, who is also an executive producer, "was I'm a young person living today and that relationship that I have with technology, and with my phone, and with kind of that false sense of intimacy, and false sense of reality that that creates. I grew up in high school with kind of that obsession, and I'd look at my phone every morning. We all do. And, for me, it was diving deeper into how technology affected these two people.

"Especially with Michelle, she was very much alone," she continues. "And meeting Conrad, that relationship sparked that kind of instant gratification that you feel. That can be a dark place to live in."

Indeed, Fanning's portrayal of Carter paints a picture of a lonely teen with few friends, but had what she believed was a best friend in Roy. Their text messages were extensive and became more intense in the days before he died. Her motive for encouraging his suicide has been the subject of much disagreement in the intervening years.

"We don't know everything," Fanning says, "and I think that's what this show is hopefully going to do best, is look deeper into those headlines and put ourselves in those characters' positions. As an actor, I guess, it's always what you try to do.

"So, yeah, it was definitely a big challenge to balance, wanting to be sensitive and feeling a responsibility of playing real people, but at the same time having to create a character that is all of our own and feeling these emotions from a truthful place."